October 12, 2007
Ethnic lobbies in America
Who knew that the US had such a powerful Armenian community? Nobody doubts it now - after the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee voted to label the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The vote has already caused a minor diplomatic crisis - with potentially serious implications.
But it also underlines something really important about US foreign policy - the extent to which it is driven by ethnic lobbies. The most famous is the Jewish lobby - call it the Israel lobby, if you want to be more precise and less controversial.
But the Jews are not the only group who know how to make their influence felt. Off the top of my head, I can think of several other cases. Black America mobilised very effectively over South Africa in the 1980s and played a vital role in pushing sanctions through. They have now gone a bit quiet on foreign policy - although Black America is still an important voice on issues like Darfur and Haiti.
Cuban-Americans are another obvious case - making sure with their voting power in Florida, money and nuisance value that the US maintains a really hard line against Cuba. Irish-Americans were vital in making sure that the US played an active role in the Northern Ireland peace process - and in pushing the British to talk to the IRA, against our better judgement. Galling as it is to admit it - in retrospect, the Irish-Americans were probably right. Now we have the Armenians. And in future, I would look out for the power of Indian-Americans. They have numbers, money and ties to the old country - so could be expected to play a powerful role in American foreign policy.
But not all hyphenated Americans are this effective. It is difficult to think of a discernible impact of Chinese-Americans on US foreign policy. And while it has long been predicted that Arab-Americans might become a more effective counterweight to the Israel lobby, so far it hasn’t happened.
So I have a few questions. Have I missed out any other obvious examples of hyphenated-Americans influencing US foreign policy? Second, why are some groups so effective and others so quiet? Is this kind of lobbying a bad thing or just a regular part of democratic politics? I ask this last question with a certain amount of foreboding, since I do not particularly want to spark off another round of the "Israel lobby" debate. Can we talk about the Cubans and the Armenians for a change?
Since the year 2000, the Iranian Americans (estimates of their numbers vary but probably a couple of million) have been trying to get the “National Iranian American Council” going. This is their web site:
http://www.niacouncil.org/
More broadly, aren’t the Ethnic Lobbies simply a subset of the general American lobby system some of which are more powerful than others (Example the National Rifle Association?).
The effective and prominence of the ethnic lobbies may depend on:
- the strength of feeling on particular issues (Armenians still talk as if the genocide against them happened last week)
-the homogeneity of the views of the community (Florida’s Cubans are uniformly anti Castro whereas the Iranians are are very diverse in their attitudes to the regime in Iran)
- the reasons that they are in America (the Chinese are mainly not from mainland China and are too busy making a living to coalesce in a political unit. The Indians are also probably too busy getting educated and getting rich to want to lobby for Mother India).
- the educational and financial levels in the community (Jews have a lot of money and a lot of educated advocates whereas Arab Americans don’t).
P
Posted by: Pacifist | October 12th, 2007 at 4:43 pm | Report this commentP,
I think you forgot the most important factor: the rightness of the cause.
As for Jews having a lot of money while Arab Americans do not - well, I don’t know. Arab Americans are mainly educated professionals; some have reached top positions, as for example Jacques Nasser, formerly of Ford. And - this might be material to explaining the relative inefficacy of their lobby - they are mostly Christians. This, I propose, weakens their solidarity with the mainly Muslim population in the Middle East. And maybe in their hearts they even sypathise with Israel, as I believe do many Christian Lebanese.
Posted by: RCS | October 12th, 2007 at 9:07 pm | Report this commentWell, Pacifist made some good observations about the cohesiveness and effectiveness of ethnic lobbies in America. I would just like to add that the increasing perception of American foreign policy as something with a for sale sign posted to it is a terrible development for our democracy, or any democracy for that matter.
Just look at the American domestic lobby, it has permeated our system -and much to the detriment of all Americans, whether they realize it or not. Issues are rarely debated and resolved based on their merits. It’s special interest pitted against special interest, and that simply doesn’t produce results that will be able to sustain a true democracy. It’s kind of similar to how the current nation-state system, with national interest pitted against national interest, will eventually and disastrously cease to provide the human population with global order.
I’m not saying that lobbies -of any sort- are bad, they’re indeed quite democratic and constitutional. The bad part about them is the money they contribute to our politicians. Money is not free speech, in this case it actually inhibits free speech. Eliminating money from the equation will allow issues to be argued and resolved meritoriously. It would also release congress from the grip of ethnic lobbyists and bring more cohesion to American foreign policy. If lobbyist want to have influence, then it should come with their voting power, not the finances they can wield.
Also, given the enormous success of ethnic lobbies in America, and the corresponding failure of American politicians to do something about it, it’s only a matter of time before we see a powerful hindu-American lobby, a Chinese-American lobby, or even a Russian-American lobby materialize.
By the way, maybe someone can explain this to me, cause all I could do is laugh when I heard that the Turks had hired Dick Gephardt to lobby Congress in light of the most recent accusation of genocide. He might be an effective lobbyist given his congressional tenure, but can anyone say he’s not doing it for the money?
Posted by: kian | October 13th, 2007 at 12:37 am | Report this commentYou are looking at the central point, the Achilles heel of American politics. It’s all about the expense of campaigning.
The Armenian lobby is like a satire of the Israel Lobby. Something that happened way back in 1915 is allowed to endanger the lives of American service men and women today.
Single issue, navel gazing politics is allowed to trump the obvious national interest. Obviously a political system like this cannot exercise global responsibility.
Posted by: David Seaton | October 13th, 2007 at 8:38 pm | Report this comment“Have I missed out any other obvious examples of hyphenated-Americans influencing US foreign policy? ”
I’m surprised you missed Filipino-Americans and Mexican-Americans. Filipino-Americans tend to be conservative, religious and support the military. Our policy towards dictators like Marcos speaks for itself, one legacy of our colonial ties with the Philippines. These days,
The issue of illegal immigration has taken on a larger size, the Mexican American lobby (and the cheap labor lobby, i.e. Bush Republicans) helped push through the recent immigration bill, which sent the right wing into a tizzy.
The Korean-American lobby (largely Christian) has been small but well organized and influential in pressuring North Korea on human rights abuses since the 1980s. Korean-Americans have mostly settled here in California and the Pacific Northwest so they may not be as visible to people on the East or in Europe.
The Italian-American lobby played a huge role in preventing anti-Soviet Communists from forming a government post-WWII.
Jews and Armenians have both largely settled in the Los Angeles area and the Bay Area (and the Armenians have very powerful constituencies in California’s Central Valley breadbasket). This is notable because of the Tom Lantos and Nancy Pelosi represent the Penninsula and San Francisco, home to both vocal Armenian pressure groups and senior Democratic Party politicians eager and wiling to bloody Bush and Rice’s noses unless the White House shows more deference to their majority power in Congress.
Second, why are some groups so effective and others so quiet?
All lobbying groups are effective to some extend but they operate in different ways. Could it be a question of culture or economics? Their legacy and duration as an ethnicity in America and their homelands? Could there be a confluence of competing, even unrelated policies which force lobbies to behave in a particular way? Yes to all, I think.
Posted by: oldhat | October 13th, 2007 at 8:51 pm | Report this commentI think it’s not right (fair better) to discuss and express thoughts related to humanistic values in a such way. It’s an insult to all victims of injustice and repression, often having paid with their lives. It’s true that American foreign policy is driven more by ethnic lobbies and financial goals and interests to respect human values. The recognition of Armenian genocide is one of the few actions taken being conformable to human values and beliefs
Posted by: Agriblogger | October 13th, 2007 at 10:09 pm | Report this commentThe English lobby was very important. The US could have been an ally of Germany in WWI, and neutral in WWII, but the english lobby was stronger than the German lobby even if statistics say that there are more German Americans….
hmm, really foreigners and the native population become “American” (that means Anglo-Saxons) and lose their old roots thinking about the Homeland of one of their grandparents (the other three are russian, mexican and irish for example) as a kind of Disney Theme Park.
The same happens in LatinAmerica: Kirshner, President of Argentina and Geisel, former president of Brazil are Hispanic but with German ancestors…Menem, former president of Argentina, and Bucaran, former presidnet of Ecuador, are Hispanic but with Arab (Syrian and Lebanese) ancestors…
Posted by: enrique | October 13th, 2007 at 11:35 pm | Report this commentAt the time of WWI, Hungarians lost much of their dreamy Kingdom, which they fought for in 1848, due to the fact that their lobby in USA was weaker than those of the other new nations springing from the dead Austrian-Hungarian Empire (Czechoslovak independence declared at the Philadelphia city hall comes to mind first). After Huntington drew, in his Clash of Civilizations, a line right through Romania, making it “a country - two civilizations”, I suppose that there is a reversal.
Posted by: Lucian Sandor | October 15th, 2007 at 12:58 am | Report this commentHi RCS,
1-) The rightness of the cause is generally only in the mind of those who espouse that cause. As an example, the Gun Lobby are very powerful in the US but when you read about yet another shooting by a schoolkid, you wonder at the rightness of their cause.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008793035
In most disputes there are two sides to the coin and each side selectively presents the bits that favours their cause and sweeps the other parts under the carpet.
2-) I do not have comparative statistics of the levels of wealth and education of the American Jews vs. American Arabs and it would be interesting if somebody came up with the facts. Off the top of my head, I can think of a heck of a lot more rich and influential American Jews than American Arabs and those American Arabs that I can think of, as you so rightly point out, are Christians (e.g. Gen. Abizaid, Ralph Nader and John Zogby). Jacques Nasser,by the way, was raised and educated mainly in Australia and made his name in Europe before getting the top job at Ford.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Nasser
All the best,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | October 15th, 2007 at 11:51 am | Report this commentGideon, I would point out something yo seem to be completely missing here. This has nothing at
Posted by: jonathan | October 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm | Report this commentall to do with a powerful Armenien lobby in the US, and everything to do with Democrat party congressmen hoping to undermine the US relationship with turkey. I’m sure you have read of Turkey threatening to stop cooperating with the US in the War on Terror, and its all because of this. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is simply putting the interests of her political party ahead of her country and its national security interests. Nobody cares about a 100 year old conflict in another country that had nothing to with us whatsoever, this is Purely political manuevering by the Democrat party.
Shame on the Traitors in that party, they care nothing for their country.
Lobby or not lobby, the jenocide of Armenians by the founders of modern Turky is a truth. Turky was born due to tremedous exterminations of Greek, Armenians…..
Posted by: raffaele | October 20th, 2007 at 6:23 am | Report this commentThe fact that in Turky it is almost forbidden to speak about it, it is the proof that it is still one of the founding points of Turky.
The extermination of diversity was and is a coloumn of Turky state.
We ought to condemn Turkey for the sacking of Constantinople while we’re at it. Sure the genocide happened, but I’d say its a bit more important to put down modern day religious terrorists than alienating an ally with its own extremist and terrorist problems (PKK, etc)
Posted by: Dave | October 27th, 2007 at 11:18 am | Report this commentSo does that mean that the end justtifies the means? When, as a nation, we have lost our ability to know Right from Wrong, stand up against what we know is true and finally empower our amnesic “friend” to sweep a terrible crime under the (Turkish) carpet, we have lost all morality ans sense of purpose.
Posted by: Alan | May 16th, 2008 at 2:19 pm | Report this comment